


Beyond the Ice and the Fire

by DreamerInSilico



Series: The Little Death [3]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Dominance, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Knifeplay, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Sensation Play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:22:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerInSilico/pseuds/DreamerInSilico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riva picks up the pieces when the Sanctuary is betrayed, slowly building the Dark Brotherhood up toward renewed greatness... but it's difficult to heal when you're the one who has to hold everything together. Lucien understands this better than most, and is in a somewhat unique position to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Cruelest Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: Heavyish BDSM
> 
> This story was originally posted on the Skyrim Kink Meme, and it takes place well after The Longest Night.

_Then the mountain rose before me,_  
 _By the deep well of desire,_  
 _From the fountain of forgiveness,_  
 _Beyond the ice and the fire..._

_(From "Dante's Prayer," by Loreena McKennitt)_

......

Had he still possessed such a crude thing as blood, it would have frozen in his veins when the legionnaire dog confronted his Listener. 

_Betrayal!_

Would have frozen, then boiled. 

Dark elves – particularly those trained as assassins – did not often show great emotion, and less often still within sight of their enemies. Yet he knew that cast of the eyes, that set of the jaw as it clenched to hold back an outcry… he knew, because he had seen nearly the same expression on another dunmer’s face, so long ago, when he had ordered her to Purify her brethren…

… and again, a thousand times more strongly, from his Dread Father’s side as she reached Applewatch and found his mangled corpse and a weak, self-satisfied Black Hand with rot still eating away at its core. (He had known, then, that his Silencer had loved him, though it would be many years in the peace of the Void before he would be able to truly understand such a mortal sort of emotion once more.) 

Now, to see Riva as she faced down her own encounter with treachery made him near-incandescent with rage. 

_They will not have you, my Listener._

She was already moving, an arrow knocked to the beautiful bow that had been Gabriella’s gift, and he gutted one of the assailants with his spectral blade even as her arrow sprouted from the eye socket of another. Three Oculatus agents against the best of the Dark Brotherhood was so ludicrous as to be insulting to her strength, but he could only be grateful that they had no hope of actually killing her, as someone had intended. 

Who had it been? Festus? Not Gabriella, surely; her heart was as black as obsidian and pure as the Void. Astrid? Arnbjorn? 

The traitor, whoever it was, would pay, in more ways than he or she could possibly have imagined.


	2. Ashes

She smelled the fire before she saw it. Shadowmere clearly did as well; she tossed her head and screeched with a fury no true horse had ever mustered, somehow galloping even faster toward their beleaguered home. 

There were legionnaires even outside the Black Door, and Lucien was upon them almost faster than she could begin shooting. 

“ _Invading filth!_ ” he snarled as the last one died. His anger gave voice to her own, which had ever been wed to silence. 

_Sithis, let us not be too late,_ she prayed, instead. _Surely I was chosen to lead, and not merely to sing the Brotherhood’s eulogy, surely there is a way…_

Inside was flame and chaos. 

She, who carried fires of Morrowind in her soul, moved through them without heed, in those moments an avatar of death itself. Her arrows flew with scarcely a thought, straight and true despite the choking red haze that permeated the defiled Sanctuary, and the invaders fell like wheat before the scythe. 

Arnbjorn lay dead in his wolf’s skin atop a half-shredded Imperial corpse, and Veezara sprawled lifelessly nearby. Though her eyes stung with more than smoke, she climbed the stone stairs out of the main cavern, casting about for more soldiers to kill and taking fierce satisfaction from the number of legionnaire bodies her brothers and sisters had already left in her path. 

By the time she found Nazir, her battle-calm was fraying, as she had found Festus dead, but none of the others… not Babette, nor Gabriella, dear Gabriella… But here was one person she could save. When his assailants were dead, he clasped her arm with a slightly shaky hand, his warm brown skin darkened almost to her own shade of charcoal by the soot that coated it. 

“By Sithis, you’re alive!” he gasped, hoarse from the smoke, but she didn’t feel it, oh no – her heart was as cold as Babette’s ancient one, even as it continued to beat within her chest. 

And then they were running, cutting down more soldiers as they went, clawing their way to freedom with Lucien a pale glow at their side… until a half-dead officer lurched from a corner to rip into the spectre’s transparent form with his ugly Legion blade. As Lucien dissolved into a shimmering cloud of ethereum and was swiftly swallowed by the leaping flames, at last, Riva found her voice to scream. This legionnaire did not receive the relative mercy of her bow; instead she drew her dagger and hacked at his face, his wrists, his gut until she was as bathed in blood as he. 

Some far-distant part of her recalled that Lucien could not truly die a second time, but that knowledge was a mere whisper of frost against the inferno, fading beside the image of everything she cared for burning and disintegrating around her. She had lost track of Nazir, and she didn’t care anymore – she had been too late to prevent this, too late to save the last shreds of the Brotherhood. While the fires might take her reluctantly, they would accept her in time. Let her die causing the Legion pain… 

_Listener!_

The voice could have just as easily been the hissing of the fire. 

_Listener! Come to me, for I am your only hope of salvation!_

“Mother…” This time, Riva felt her lips form the word without sound. She had already ceded her hope; nonetheless, the Night Mother’s voice was not one to be denied. If the Listener died, she would do so being worthy of her title, not spurning the voice that had granted it. 

......

Ashes.

She could smell them, see them, choke upon them… so she must still be alive. 

Someone was saying something… was that Nazir? Then it was true… she wasn’t the only one left. 

“Riva? I don’t creep out easily, but you can step out of that coffin at any time. I’m just saying.” 

She opened her eyes, blinking away the grit that seemed to hang in the air, and slowly emerged, though only half-aware of what he had said. It was strange, leaving the coffin that housed a centuries-old corpse only to find that she preferred the Night Mother’s company to the thought of the fresh corpses that would surely be waiting for her out in the Sanctuary. But she was the Listener, and she had work to do. It had only felt like an antiquated title before – had only been treated as such – but now she felt the weight of it like a physical cloak settling around her shoulders, oddly comforting in the aftermath of ruin. Whichever venerable ancient first penned the aphorism that command was a lonely thing had the right of it, certainly, but the oft-cited fear of suddenly being the one others looked to for answers was completely absent. On the contrary: being the Listener meant she knew _exactly_ what she had to do. 

She had a Brotherhood to rebuild. 

Nazir and Babette stood before her, looking uncertain, when at last she acknowledged them. “Astrid is here somewhere. We need to find her.” 

…...

Delivering Astrid’s death blow brought no satisfaction, only a tepid sense of pity. No invective Riva could hurl or torture she could inflict could meaningfully add to the traitor’s suffering, for Astrid had loved her Family as much as she loved her power. 

There were no flames left, only ashes. 

One by one, they collected the bodies of their fallen. Arnbjorn and Veezara had died in the main cavern, and so were the first to be dragged to lie before the pool and the Night Mother. Astrid joined them in repose beside her husband, her body having acquitted its purpose in the circle of the Black Sacrament. Festus had been scorched nearly past recognition; only the flashing ruby ring he wore confirmed beyond doubt that the body was his. Though even her gallows humor was silent that night, Riva mechanically noted the irony, filing it away for the day when she remembered how to laugh at destruction. 

Gabriella was the last, and the hardest, for Riva only realized when she found the other dunmer’s body lying like a broken doll in a hallway that she had half-hoped her friend still lived. 

_You pulled me back from the brink, once... I only wish I had the chance to do the same for you. Peace in the Void to you, Sister._

When the three survivors had finished laying out the others, Riva saluted them, fist to her chest and a farewell unspoken, before summoning a ravenous blaze to finish the task the Legion’s foul fires had started. No carrion would be left for scavengers and worms… only ashes.


	3. Nightmares

The Dawnstar Sanctuary had seemed uncomfortably large at first, as if it was some old tomb whose tunnels just kept going Sithis only knew how deep – a place to weather in for a day or two at most, always watching one’s back, before moving on to somewhere more secure. However, with the new Murderers they were recruiting to their ranks, she was sure that the last remaining shard of the Dark Brotherhood would grow to fill it, and no longer rattle around inside like the last half-handful of coins in a jar meant to hold a fortune. Nazir had done well while she had been away to complete the contract on the Emperor and secure renovations for the Sanctuary. 

Riva felt the satisfaction of a responsibility well-acquitted, but it was a remote thing, a candle flame whose light left many dank corners of her mind untouched. The corners were filled with ashes and the charred bones of her first brethren that waited to finally be swept away, but she could not bring herself to touch them, to remember. She had too much work to do and too much respect (and fear) to inspire in the new recruits to allow the possibility of a breakdown. 

The new blood came to know her for her silence, save when she had to train them or relay orders. When the Brotherhood was once again large enough to produce five assassins worthy of the title Speaker, she would need only interact with them. For now, Nazir was Speaker in all but name, but there was too much work that needed a seasoned touch for her to pass all her orders through him – with the civil war still raging and a renewed punctuality in responding to those who performed the Black Sacrament, the pace of incoming new contracts was as punishing as it was lucrative. 

And so she trained, and killed, and Listened, and tried to forget. 

Lucien had reappeared as the moon reached its zenith the second night after the Sanctuary had burned. Riva had been sitting alone with her back to the fire, sleepless, when his form coalesced in its cold luminescence against the impenetrable black of the forest that surrounded them. 

_I returned as soon as I was able_ , he had said. 

_I know. I am glad to see you._

She had not told him of the irrational relief that accompanied his arrival, how she had feared that somehow he would be permanently destroyed along with her Family and her home… but she suspected he knew, all the same. 

_You are not alone, dear Sister._

Since then, he had remained at her side, fading from view as it was expedient, but always present. He made no remark of the sleeping draught she took every night, perhaps knowing what she fled from. He had told her, once, of the Purification of Cheydinhal Sanctuary and how it had haunted him, even though he himself had not wielded the blade. 

_How did you live with it?_ she had asked. 

He had laughed darkly and shaken his head. _I didn’t – at least not very long._

Remembering that conversation was somewhat less than encouraging. 

The sheer quantity of work that was always waiting for her kept her moving, one task to the next. If she always had an urgent contract to fulfill or some new minor calamity to prevent or repair, she could pull herself along from day to day without the smell of ashes surrounding her. Every time she slowed down, she caught a whiff of it again, as it chased her, demanding to be acknowledged. 

Eventually, however, the day came when her frenzy of activity overtook the availability of distractions, as a forest fire eventually devours every tree that can sustain it. Riva could feel the memories coming, circling around her, hemming her in with flashing claws and bared teeth, preparing to strike…

…Except they didn’t. She braced for the desolation of loss – reached for it, even, after some hours had passed – but it did not come. There was tension, but no pain; memory, but no tears. She could smell the ashes as if they blanketed her, smothering even the few barely-glowing embers she had carried in her mind. Inside the doomed Sanctuary, at least she had had access to anger; now, even that was gone. 

In a strange, deadened facsimile of desperation, she cast about for the very memories whose intensity she had dreaded – the frozen moment when the Imperial general had confronted her in a way that revealed he had been expecting her, the way Lucien’s form had shimmered under the soldier’s assault and then disappeared before her eyes, the stab of recognition when she had turned over a scorched body and found dunmer features as delicately fierce as her own. Nothing, nothing, and nothing. What of when Lucien had come back to her? There, she felt an echo of that relief, the ever-so-lightly etched promise that her place in the world could be rebuilt, but an echo was all it was. 

Restless, she catfooted up the ladder through the secret entrance and out into the twilit snow. Even in midsummer, Dawnstar was wrapped in a bitter cold that brought to mind winter in the relatively temperate forests of southern Skyrim. Unbidden, the memory of her first harried flight from Solitude surfaced – she’d nearly died in the blizzard after a guard’s arrow took her in the hip and she’d been unable to stay horsed. Shadowmere had brought her Gabriella, but it had been Lucien who had kept her clinging to life long enough for the mage to reach them. Even half-frozen and delirious from pain, she had felt an inviolable connection to every part of her task, and her Family – there was triumph at a contract completed, gratitude for those who brought her back to the Sanctuary alive… even love. 

She knew all this, like looking at a bright gem in a glass viewing case – the sort she had been devilishly adept at getting into, in her days before the Dark Brotherhood found her – but this time there was a lock that not even her nimble fingers could coax open. Riva stood outside in the snow with the wind whipping her hair to snarls and her pointed ears to numbness, until the last vestiges of sunlight had faded from the sky, leaving only stars in its place. 

……

The sleeping draught sat placidly in its cobalt bottle at her bedside, promising the dim oblivion of another dreamless night… but she found herself unwilling to do this again, to wake up with only a lapse in time, unchanged. She had avoided the nightmares this way for weeks; now, she would almost welcome them, if only to feel _something_ sharp and real again. 

But there was another sort of nightmare that could be waiting for her. 

Riva licked dry lips to speak the first word she had said the whole day. “Lucien.” 

“My Listener?” His subtly hollow baritone answered her immediately from the shadows. 

“I… “ She knew what to ask, finally, but not what to say. “I need…” She sensed him move closer, and the chill, insubstantial caress of spectral fingers danced around her face, down her neck and across her shoulders, encouraging her. 

His question was soft with the unique note of menace that was never truly absent from his voice. “…yes? What do you need?” 

He was going to make her say it, of course, even now. Perhaps especially now. 

There were so many words that were the answer to his question, all correct but somehow inadequate to explain the enormity of her request – pain, but so much more than pain; healing at the kiss of a scourge or the blade of a knife. It was fortunate he could hear what she didn’t say, as well what she did. “…To feel.” That was a start, at least. Lucien waited in his uncanny silence. “To… to wake up.” She swallowed. “To hurt. Please.” Had he been corporeal, she knew, he would have caught his breath at that; as it was, his eyes sharpened until they were intense enough to lock hers in place. There was an exchange of power in the asking, for it had never been an easy thing for her to do. “I need _you_.”

Something in his bearing eased as if he had been waiting for her to come to him but uncertain that she would… and maybe he had been, at that. “Then do not run from your dreams tonight.”


	4. Absolution

Riva awoke in her own bed, disoriented. Had she taken the sleeping draught after all? She didn’t remember doing so, but she hadn’t been thinking terribly clearly, either. Kicking off the covers revealed that her legs were mired in more than just blankets – she was wearing robes dyed as black as ink, with subtle details woven into the sleeves in silver thread. 

Odd. In the safety of the Sanctuary, she slept nude on all but the coldest nights. 

The flagstones were cool and hard beneath her bare feet as she slipped out of bed, but she had stepped on something small and soft – petals? Looking down, she saw the flowers, and understood. 

Deep blue gentian blooms were strewn across the floor, still fresh and fragrant as if they had just been plucked – a complete impossibility as far north as Dawnstar, even in the summer. There was only one being alive or dead who knew of her love for that benign flower, and he would have placed the blossoms here to tell her she was dreaming. 

When Riva looked more closely, she saw that they formed a trail across the room to where the second fireplace should have been, but instead there lay a depression in the stone that told of a stairway leading down. She knew as surely as she knew her name that she would find Lucien waiting at the bottom. 

Spiraling down into cool shadows, the stairs were steep, and smooth as though they had been worn down by generations of feet. Mage-lights flickered red and gold intermittently from alcoves in the walls, enough to keep the staircase from being perilous, but little more than that. Lifting her robes with one hand and steadying herself against the wall with the other, Riva drank in the hyper-reality of the dream – the roughness of the walls in contrast to the smooth stone under her feet, the drafts that blew up from below and the smell of old stone… and a metallic undertone that spoke of iron, or blood, or both. 

The barest shiver swept over her, and she shook her head, bemused. For all the times they’d done this dance, this game of power and surrender, she always expected the edge of trepidation that accompanied the opening foray to begin to dull, but it never had. She could know that this staircase and indeed, everything about this dream-Sanctuary was carefully crafted to tug at the strings of her mind, and yet still feel that pull and sound the chord that he meant to play. 

There was beauty in it, even now. 

The staircase curved, not quite spiraling, but enough to obscure what lay ahead, and so the transition from its close walls into open space was an abrupt one. Her footsteps, silent by habit, did not echo in the vaulted chamber, but the architecture was such that any sound here was sure to be heard… if there had been sound at all. Only the slight pressure changes in the drafty air, more felt than heard, informed her that she had not gone deaf. 

_A good place for one who does not care to be surprised._

The walls were carved reliefs of the sort she had seen in a dozen Skyrim tombs, their images brushed with dim, red light and limned in shadow. She walked past scenes clearly from the Brotherhood’s history – the Night Mother with her five children; the statue at her old resting place in Bravil with a single, robed figure kneeling before it – and many others from times she did not immediately recognize. Slowly, a theme emerged from the images: gathering strength and exalted power, then death and downfall and slow rebuilding. Again and again, the Brotherhood burned and arose from the ashes, over the march of centuries. 

He stood like carved stone himself at the center of the far end of the chamber, face shadowed by his hood and waiting as she took in the images. Riva stifled the urge to rush to meet him. In these worlds he painted, many details simply served to make them feel whole, or to set a specific mood, but this… timeline… was meant to be followed, taken in, remembered. 

As she drew closer, her eyes fell upon a richly-detailed depiction of the Black Hand, and one of them spurred a quiet shock of recognition – though his features were masked by robes and hood, his posture exactly matched that of the man who waited ahead. Riva paused, eyes closing for a moment before she opened them again to move on. She knew how this turn of the cycle ended. 

There was a Sanctuary strewn with corpses as a woman knelt in their midst, holding a knife and doubled over as if weeping. Then one by one, Speakers and Listener fell, until the only two left of the original five were Lucien and a tall mer… the latter of whom gathered new Speakers around her and set upon Lucien in pursuit. And then he stood waiting, as the woman who must have been his Silencer raced on a shadow-spun steed to his side and the rest of the Black Hand closed in upon him. 

The erstwhile Silencer stood at the last before one strung-up corpse and the crumpled ones of three nameless Speakers as well as the cowering mer, her face harder even than the stone that depicted it as the Night Mother looked on with grim approval. 

Riva saw the Dark Brotherhood rebuilt into new glory under that Listener, then slowly dwindling… and a set of scenes even harder to look upon, that showed her own ascension from the ashes of Falkreath Sanctuary. 

Finally, she stood just beyond the last relief of herself, and just before the still-silent Lucien. He waited, his eyes hard, yet warm and living. 

She drew a deep breath, gathering the will to break the silence. “It shows so much, but none of the pain.” 

Moving for the first time since she had entered the chamber, he smiled slightly. “And do _you_ show it, Listener?” 

Once, she might have laughed at that. “Only to you,” she admitted. 

Lucien’s gloved fingers reached up and traced, feather-light, across her face as if brushing away tears, but when he pulled them away and showed them to her, they were dry. “Not even to me, in a way that one could carve into stone.” 

Riva bowed her head slightly. “Nor the guilt…” 

“That is because there is none to be had,” he said, with sudden fierceness. “Not for her – “ he gestured toward the image of his former Silencer – “nor for you.” 

Eyes downcast, she whispered the one thing she knew she had no right to say, but that had echoed in her thoughts ever since the flames. “… I should have been there.” 

“Look at me.” The words were soft and deadly. 

Riva hesitated, ashamed, and this time the hand that arose was anything but gentle, gripping her chin and jerking her face upward. “ _Look_ at me.” She did not dare close her eyes. 

Lucien’s face was a stormcloud, merciless and forbidding, and his raised voice transmuted to thunder by the echoing stone around them. “Would you rather the Brotherhood had been extinguished, its legacy snuffed out at a stroke by a bleating mob of Legion _sheep_ and a single traitor’s arrogance?” 

“…No,” she said in a sigh. 

“You are the Listener who plucked the last embers of her dying Family away from a traitor’s folly and fanned them back to steady flame. Do you reject that success?” he demanded. 

“No.” 

“Then explain to me. Why should you have been there?” He stroked along the line of her cheekbone with his thumb, his tone kinder, but still filled with a dreadful intensity. 

_Explain?_ Words tried to flee from her tongue in two directions at once, choking her. Submitting to lash or knife would be easier than this. 

_Which he well knows._

Now Riva did close her eyes, and he allowed it. “The – … I – … Lucien, I can’t.” 

“You can, and you will, before anything else happens,” he replied, implacable. 

_Of course_. She cast about for a way to string the errant words together, more difficult now even than it normally would have been, thanks to the recent dearth of practice. “As I was riding from Solitude… I kept thinking, that if only I could get there first…” she paused, swallowing past the lump rising in her throat. “If I could only get there in time, I could save them. I was so angry… felt so strong. We would have killed them all.” 

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Lucien murmured. “But do continue.” 

“I didn’t want to die!” she bit out. It was suddenly very important that he understood that, that he knew his admonition had not been forgotten. _The Void holds many gifts for ones such as we, but do not rush to meet it!_ “Not like… not like that one time, in the snowstorm. And I don’t think I should have died with them, even now. I think I should have saved them.” She knew she could not have. She knew, but every time she said that to herself, it sounded like a platitude, or worse, an _excuse_. 

Lucien sighed and shook his head, looking weary in a way she had never seen from him, and drew his hand away in a lingering caress. She followed the direction of his gaze with her own eyes, and they landed upon the panel that depicted a Silencer’s flight toward a failed rescue, two centuries before. 

“The game was fixed against you, set so that you could not possibly have time, even though you killed those who would have slain you. I was unable to say this when it was needed… before, so perhaps I may do so now.” He turned back to meet her eyes soberly. “You could not have saved them. You have saved their memories, their legacy, in a way that would have been lost forever had you not carried on. That is more of a gift than you can know.” 

Riva nodded, her chest clenching. From him… from him, she could believe it, and that in itself was a gift, as was the breathless pang his rare earnestness brought. A sudden flash of intuition, that perhaps the unjust guilt was not always confined to the living, had her taking up his hands in her own and whispering, “And this time, _you_ are still here, at the end and the beginning. I – When you were banished, at the Sanctuary, I felt -” She swallowed, and tried again, trusting the emotion she so rarely allowed to show to compensate for her paucity of speech. “ _I still have you_.” 

It was Lucien’s turn to bow his head, squeezing her fingers with warm hands before releasing them to cup her face and pull her into a kiss with startling ferocity. Riva felt her passion rise to meet his own so suddenly it left her lightheaded, a burst of magma through the stifling crust of ice, and she wrapped both arms around his sparely-muscled shoulders and pulled him to her as imperatively as she dared. 

The kiss ended almost as quickly as it had begun, leaving her heart racing and his eyes ablaze as he watched her. 

With a confidence she had not felt since she set foot on his dreamscape staircase, she undid the silver clasps on her robes, whose intricate embellishments exactly matched those of the Listeners’ robes in the wall reliefs. She shrugged away the inky weight, and with it the mantle of authority, letting it puddle about her feet on the floor. Now clad only in thin grey leggings and an undertunic that fell just past her hips, she gathered up the symbol of her superior rank and power and folded it upon itself with Lucien looking on in charged silence. 

Then Riva knelt, offering it up to him with outstretched hands, her skin pricked to gooseflesh by the cool touch of stone and something else entirely. 

“To you, and _only_ you, I will yield.”


	5. Absolution II

She holds my eyes, more challenger than supplicant, and my pulse quickens in response.  Somehow it means so much more, this way; her eyes are the color of blood and they know full well what they offer me, wrapped up in a Listener’s shed robe.  I brush my fingers across the backs of her hands as I take the heavy fabric from her, and only my deep familiarity with this woman, her body, her mind, her bearing, lets me recognize the ever-so-slight tension that threads through her posture when I do so.  I command the robe to sublimate to wisps of smoke in my hands, and wave them once, decisively, to dissipate the smoke into nothingness. 

Riva is still kneeling, looking up at me, and the trust in her face cuts as keenly as her words did, only moments ago. 

_I still have you_. 

And I still have you, my beautiful Listener, my partner in death and darker things, my absolution, my love.  And I want so very badly to thank you for your strength and your devotion, that kept you standing while others fell, and that rebuilt our Brotherhood almost single-handedly; I want to thank you for this gift you give me of your body and your trust and your very _thoughts_ … I want to thank you, but I cannot say those words, not here, not now, so I will tell you instead in this subtle language we both know so well, of power and pain and desire. 

She is too small for me to bend to kiss her where she kneels upon the floor, so I take her wrists in my hands and pull her to her feet – firm, but not harsh.  To use force right now would be to disrespect the nature of her surrender; there is no need to bind her will when she has offered it up to me whole-cloth in tribute. 

No, this is the time for confidence, not violence.  She is _mine_ , and I have all the time in the Void to savor that knowledge – and oh, but it is sweet.  She stands gracefully in perfect time to my prompt, and I can feel myself smiling as I thread my hands into her hair to kiss her again. 

I suspect we will both be remembering the fragile transparency in that first kiss, the one I did not plan, when the night is over, but for now, I will give her something else to think about.  I tighten my fingers in her hair to grip, and her head falls back as I pull, unresisting despite the shudder I feel her suppress. 

If you want to unsettle an assassin, force her to bare her throat.  It does not matter that she knows this world is but a figment of her thoughts and my shaping, nor does it even matter that she trusts me with her life and more – there is something visceral in the exposure that cannot be denied, and I _revel_ in the response that is not quite fear and not quite excitement, but some fluttering consensus between the two. 

(True fear will come later.  That is a blade I use only rarely, lest it lose its edge… but I will take it up tonight.  I need it, and so, I think, does she.)

When I kiss her, it is an act of possession, a wholehearted acceptance of her offering.  


	6. Decisions

The desire in his gaze as she offered him the physical symbol of her power was like a hook set into her very being, drawing her upward as surely as did his hands a moment later, but it was his smile in the instant before he pulled her head backward that sent alternating waves of heat and chill chasing one another across her skin. It was a smile to inspire terror… or a bone-deep thrum of desire in one who knew the other side of Lucien’s thoughtful malice.

Riva’s every survival instinct demanded that she break his hold on her hair, twist away and into a position where she could cover her vitals, but this was a game of will. She had placed herself in his hands, and there she would stay. Nevertheless, a shudder swept through her body with both the effort needed to accept this vulnerability, and, paradoxically, the keen-edged thrill of the compulsion to do so.

Where the first kiss had been an impulsive celebration, almost a blessing, this one was an unequivocal demand, starkly controlled even in the hunger it contained – _You are mine_.

_Yes, Lucien. I am yours_.

More of the ice around her soul melted away.

She met his tongue with her own in tacit assent, yielding, yes, but never passive, and he tasted her with an unhurried thoroughness that stole the breath from her chest. The slight pain from his grip on her hair and the warm presence of his body not _quite_ pressing to hers were noticed more in the negative space they left when he suddenly released her, leaving her swaying where she stood, her eyes heavy-lidded and already half-drunk with need.

“You will not be needing the rest of what you are wearing. See yourself free of it.” The velvet instruction, when it came, took a moment to sink in, for words to become meaning and meaning become action – long enough that Riva was slightly surprised that his patience held, by the time she had started moving to obey. That realization in itself brought a shiver that chased its way across newly-bared skin: when Lucien was particularly lenient at the beginning of an encounter, it always boded ominously for later on.

Well and so; she would not have expected this night to be otherwise. Not after what had passed.

Unlike her Listener’s robes in his hands moments before, her drab underclothes did not sublimate away, but lay about her feet on the chilly floor when she had finished. Riva stood naked before Lucien’s calmly watchful eyes, at once knowing that he liked what he saw – dark skin presently free of war paint, but respectably decorated with calluses and scars; lean, smooth curves and wiry muscle over a deceptively delicate bone structure; a bearing that said _I am a weapon_ – and feeling the almost clinical chill of his regard, all the same.

(The heat of desire was still there – oh yes – but he would choose when to allow it to rise to the surface… or on rare occasion, she might draw it from him, unbidden. That always carried a steep price, but a glorious one.)

Rather than leave her hands to drift aimlessly at her sides or clasp them in front of herself where they could be used as cover, Riva crossed her wrists behind her back as if they had been tied there, eyes rising slowly from the floor to meet Lucien’s once more and hold that deadly gaze. They stood in silence for a long moment, until the subtlest of smiles crossed his face and he raised a gloved hand to indicate an open door in the side of the chamber wall that had previously been hidden (or perhaps had simply not yet existed).

“After you,” he murmured. The smile was audible in his voice.

As she preceded him down the dimly-lit corridor, hands still clasped behind her, Riva reflected that being told to lead the way had rarely if ever had _quite_ this effect on her nerves. His gaze was now an almost physical presence that rode between her shoulder blades like a wash of warm breath before an ambush or an embrace, yet he was keeping his distance, offering no support or goading save the weight of his expectation. She would go where he ordered because he willed it, not because he would prod her until she did.

Lucien did not ‘prod.’ Lucien was either obeyed or defied, and the rewards or consequences of that action were as inevitable as snowfall on the Throat of the World.

Two protracted, silent minutes later, the corridor opened onto another chamber that was clearly their destination. The warm light of true fire flickered upon the stone walls from a cavernous hearth that dominated the left-hand wall, and from thick candles that rested on ledges set into the wall or simply in clusters on the floor. A small, stone dais strewn with blankets and furs spoke of a bed, though Riva’s eyes only lingered on that benign detail for a moment before moving on to take in the mahogany armoire and the racks of implements on that wall.

From the very center of the ceiling was suspended a long, thick chain that ended in a pair of well-padded cuffs at Riva’s eye level.

“Do you approve?” came the deep, quiet voice tinged with amusement… and far closer to her than he should have been able to get without her hearing it. But this was Lucien, and this was his domain, after all. Riva’s breath caught as the sudden heat of his nearness behind her came as an ephemeral caress to match his words; she wanted to lean back against him but knew better than to make such a move.

Instead, she simply answered in a murmur while Lucien leaned in to trace the length of her neck ever so faintly with his lips. “I do, indeed.”

“Fortunate for you, then.” A purr of a laugh, an almost playful flicker of a tongue just beneath her jaw. She found herself responding to it, turning about to raise a hand to his face – and the sheer surprise at her own response stopped her as surely as did his hands as he caught both her wrists in a steely, implacable grip. His smile held a new level of danger within it, and the sense that she had pleased him (as the chipmunk pleases the cat when it darts aside, and begins the merry chase). “Though _that_ , perhaps less so,” he added, yanking her arms upward, to where they had always been intended to go.

Riva shuddered at those words, so casual and yet so deliberate, as the manacles closed with perfect tightness around her wrists. Her own action had been nearly involuntary, and that, she would pay for in extra torment.

She would welcome it. The blood roared in her ears at his sudden violence of motion.

“I'm sorry,” she half whispered, half gasped.

“Are you?” The question was almost perfunctory in its curiosity, yet laden with meaning.

Riva took a slow breath. She needed to corral her thoughts. It was too early to be leaking them out indiscriminately, however much that might be the tacit, eventual goal.

“I... no. I am not sorry.” How could she be, for responding to his touch? “But I beg your forgiveness, all the same.” There. That was an appropriate acknowledgment of the transgressive non-transgression.

“Mmmn.” Lucien chuckled, an unnameable gleam in his dark eyes. “And you shall have it in time, dear Listener.”

The title – the one she had willingly, symbolically shed when she placed herself within his power – was an unexpected knife in the gut, somehow. Riva flinched, though she could not have said why.

It just felt...

_Please just let me escape that, for a little while._

The look Lucien gave her said he smelled blood in the water, but he did not offer further comment on that, specifically.

Instead, he disengaged, pacing across the room to open the armoire thoughtfully. She twisted in her suspended manacles to keep her eyes on him – which she was sure he was expecting.

“What _should_ I do with you tonight?” he mused, almost conversationally. “Whip... cane... flesh hooks...”

That tone made her shudder, but it also told her that he would take up none of those things. And given that those were among the most severe implements of benign torture she had thus far experienced... Her skin flashed hot, then cold and scattered with gooseflesh.

“Anything,” she whispered.

“You tempt me, as always,” he admonished, tone light, almost humorous. “But no. I think we both know that 'anything' won't suit us. It never does.”

She did know that. Everything they'd ever done, every word they'd said or glance and touch they'd shared was precisely chosen for that specific moment. And it could not be otherwise, especially not that night.

A fine-boned hand dipped confidently into the armoire at last, withdrawing two small objects whose nature she could not quite distinguish, before Lucien turned back toward her with an enigmatic smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this is still happening. I've got enough outlined now that I can more confidently say that it should actually get finished.
> 
> A huge thank-you to all my long-time readers for your patience, and your encouragement.


	7. Interrogation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, we're finally getting to the more explicit bits. Thanks for bearing with me. I prefer my porn with plot, and sometimes I get a bit wrapped up in that... >_>

A single fluid motion saw Lucien's robe shrugged off and tossed aside, to lie in a pool of sable fabric near the bedding. Beneath it, he wore fitted breeches and a loose-laced shirt, both in a more service-worn black that had faded to charcoal.Rich chestnut hair and barely-lined skin marked his age at no more than the early part of his third decade, but his darkly glittering eyes, as always, gave the lie to any such assumption.

They held the experience of over two centuries of service to their Lord of the Void and his handmaiden, the Night Mother, and all the pain and cruelty such an existence entailed.

But they also held a keen understanding and care that stirred the heart in Riva's chest, and a _hunger_ that heated the blood in her veins.

There was a strange feeling of extra exposure as he made his way back to her and prowled around her naked form – typically, if he chose to bind her, it was to something solid that she could brace against. Here, her bonds were suspended by a chain long enough (with the cuffs themselves set low enough) that she could easily take a few steps in any direction, if she so dared. Somewhat paradoxically, perhaps, for an assassin, that relative freedom of movement felt far more perilous than would a set of firm ties to which she could simply surrender... and knowing Lucien, that was likely the point. He was perversely fond of requiring an active choice at every turn – not simply the choice _not_ to speak the word that would call an end to their game, but the choice to obey, and how, and how quickly. Whether to speak. What to say. The choice to resist her instinct to turn as he paced around her, now.

Until, that is, he paused just behind her, breath brushing warm and soft against her neck, as deceptively gentle as the hand that snaked around her hips and across her belly to turn her around to face him. She shivered at that leather-clad caress, eyes rising to meet his as the hand withdrew.

Lucien smiled, showing teeth, and stepped back to tug off his gloves, revealing elegant, talented fingers. Riva wasn't sure whether she was glad or disappointed to see the leather go.

Tucked into his belt, now, was a carved ivory handle of... something, likely a knife of some sort, by the size, and he held a small jar of something that he shifted from hand to hand as the gloves came off, which she eyed with curiosity.

The words, _a bit tame tonight, no?_ rose to her lips, but she knew better than to speak them. His smirk said he heard her thinking them, anyway.

“You don't know what this is, do you?”

Riva shook her head.

He deftly unscrewed the plain stone lid, revealing a nondescript, translucent salve of some sort. Her sensitive nose detected no whiff of perfume in the air, not even when he very carefully touched the tip of one index finger to it and advanced on her. The dry fingers of that same hand teased across her body first, light brushes against her jaw, along her collarbones and down between her breasts before anointing her small, hardened nipples with whatever concoction he held.

She didn't know what she had expected to feel from that beyond the pleasant touch of his fingers upon her, but _nothing_ had assuredly not made the list. She raised an eyebrow, earning her a quiet chuckle and a mirror of that expression from Lucien....

… And the tingling began, progressing swiftly to burning, making Riva squirm slightly in her bonds, and she understood. “Firebell,” she whispered, as gooseflesh pebbled the skin of her breasts and all the way down her sides to her hips, referencing the sharply spicy pepper beloved in Morrowind and Elsweyr as a food additive.

“Well, strictly speaking...” his tone was richly amused. “What it is doesn't exactly matter in this place. But yes. That is what I would use, did I still wear flesh in the waking world. Now.” He rubbed his fingers together briskly, as if to dissipate the ointment – and that is probably what he was actually doing – and drew the implement from his belt. “It has been _such_ a long time since I last conducted an interrogation.”

The thing glinted in the firelight, a small, thin blade revealed that was more scalpel than knife. Riva shuddered, eyes following that blade for a moment before fluttering closed as it teased painlessly against as-yet unbroken skin.

“I will tell you anything I can.”

“Yes... that _is_ the difficulty, though.”

Yes. Yes, it was.

“It seems I need to _make_ you be able to. Would you disagree, dear Listener?”

Again, the title. She felt tears gathering in her eyes against her will. Did he... ?

The blade flicked up, to catch her chin with the flat side of it and gently, precisely tilt her head up to look at him again.

Oh, he knew.

“Answer me.” The command was as sharp and yet unobtrusive as the tiny blade itself.

Riva forced out the words, not daring to shake her head. “No, I wouldn't. Lucien.” Her nipples were burning in earnest now, points of fire that sent shivers of heat through her core.

“Then let us begin.” The words were dark as the robes they had both shed, and velvet-soft as if in deliberate contrast to the knife that now moved back down to her left shoulder.... and bit in, lightly, so lightly.

It was sharp enough that she barely felt it part her skin at first.

At first.

Her breath hissed out through her teeth as he began to drag it sideways, concentrating her awareness to that one point of pain as the continuing heat at each breast faded into a blurry... strangely pleasant... background. She withstood it for a handful of seconds, before it bit in just a hair more deeply, and she flinched backward, forgetting that she was not trapped in the way she so often was, with him wrecking calculated havoc upon her body. It hurt more than staying still, and she gasped, shivers reclaiming her form as a tiny trickle of blood traced its way down her skin.

Lucien was chuckling. “You're going to have to stand still for me, you know.”

Riva's answer was a whimper and a shudder.

“Tell me, beautiful Sister, why are we here?” he asked softly, raising the blade to her skin once more, though not yet cutting in.

“Because - “ Her breath caught, and her eyes darted leftward to catch the knife in view, then his hand, then up to his face. “Because we want to be.”

It must have been an answer that both pleased and surprised him, for he leaned in at that to catch her lips in a brief, searing kiss. His hand on the knife was uncannily steady, and it yet refrained from breaking skin.

“...And why do we want to be here – _here_ , tonight, _now_?” The knife hovered, a butterfly kiss of a threat.

That was harder.

“I.... you... I asked you. To teach me how to feel again.”

A pause.

“And have I?”

Her answer was hesitant, but not false. “... Yes.” But not quite true, either, and he knew it.

“ _No_.” The knife bit in again, and she let out a soft moan, but stayed still, this time. “I have _reminded_ you, briefly. But there is only one person who can give you permission to do that.”

 _And that is not me, but you._ The words unsaid echoed beneath what she heard, and she bowed her head.

His words shifted direction. “Why does this help you as it does?” he asked quietly, dragging the blade again, ever so slowly, through her skin, in a cut that connected gracefully to the first.

Riva gasped. “I can't.... can't....”

“Can't?”

“ _Think_.”

She sensed rather than saw his smile. “You are always thinking. But I think this lets you slow down, if only a very little bit.”  
  


…

 

I know pain, dear Sister. I know what it does to men and mer. I know how to use it to open doors, and open minds.

And that is _exactly_ what I am doing, here. Only the motivation is different, and... even that...

You are so beautiful when you put yourself in my hands.

And because that is voluntary, because you _want_ to be here, I can give you so much more. More than I take, I hope. I believe.

 

…

 

“It does,” she whispered.

“And what is it, now, that you need to not think, but feel?” he asked, voice inexorable. The knife rose, whispering over a still-burning breast to the skin just below it. She shivered, and felt it bite into her flesh with the trembling motion, ever so slightly.

“Falkreath.” The word was bitten out. Short. Ugly.

“Yes,” Lucien agreed simply, and silence reigned for a few moments more, except for the quiet gasps she made as he dipped the blade into another shallow cut, scribing a sigil of lost origin beneath her breast. “You were happy, there.”

“ _Yes_ ,” she gasped, relief entering her voice despite the tension born of pain as he continued to slowly, artistically mangle her skin. “Yes, I was.”

“But a place is only a place,” he answered, blade flashing, the point of pain still moving as inexorably as his voice.

“Yes....”

“Yes. Why all this, then?” The question was almost, _almost_ gentle.

“ _Gabriella!”_ she replied immediately, unthinkingly. “And Veezara. And Arnbjorn. And Festus.” Riva swallowed hard, then released a soft cry as his knife dipped deeper again, tracing along her ribcage. “And Astrid. I should hate her.”

Lucien's reply was almost, _almost_ neutral. “But you don't.”

“I can't,” she gasped. “I tried, Lucien. But _Sithis_ , I cared for her, too.”

“Why?” The word was soft. The blade lifted.

Riva's breaths came heaving, now, with the effort of staying still as he cut her. Two tears forced their way out of the corners of her eyes, and in front of anyone, _anyone_ else, she would be ashamed of that. But with Lucien... there was only honesty. As much of it as she had to give.

“She gave me my Family,” she whispered after a moment. “Could you hate the one who brought you into the fold, no matter what they did?”

Those words had not meant to cut him, in turn, but it was clear that they did. He almost, _almost_ flinched, and a deeper darkness took his eyes, as he nodded slightly. “That.... I understand.”

The knife slipped back into its sheath, and another two silent waves of tears coursed down her cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. "Firebell" is not an actual alchemy ingredient in TES, sad to say. I didn't find anything in the list I thought was likely to give the same effect. 
> 
> 2\. Since the use of capsaicin ointment as a sex toy isn't covered in your average BDSM 101 or even 201 article, I feel compelled to put some information here, for my own peace of conscience: 
> 
> The mechanism of action by which capsaicin produces those burny sensations is pretty interesting; capsaicin directly stimulates a signalling pathway that basically goes "OW WOW HOT" without actually damaging anything. It causes a nerve response of heat/pain and secondary response of mild inflammation, but that's all direct chemistry. As a result, it's an interesting agent for causing pain without actually doing damage. 
> 
> But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful with the stuff, because as anyone who's ever ordered something a little too spicy in a restaurant knows, it's kind of hard to wash off. 
> 
> Straight-up capsaicin ointment that's currently marketed for arthritis and the like is almost certainly too strong to pleasantly use on mucous membranes and other very sensitive tissue (i.e. genitals). You can dilute it with plain petroleum jelly, or mineral oil. Ten-fold dilutions, if you're feeling scientific about it. If you're going to do it, nipples make a good test case because they won't burn quite as badly as more sensitive bits, and they're easier to wash. Capsaicin is oil-soluble, so if you want to wash some of it off, use mineral oil and/or cow's milk (which contains a protein that helps solubilizes the compound). 
> 
> Whatever you do, don't get that shit in your eyes. That's not fun no matter how kinky you are.
> 
> /end PSA


	8. Storm

Her eyes flickered shut for a moment, and when she opened them and blinked the tears away, Lucien had slipped off his shirt and tossed that aside to lie in the same black puddle as his robe. She could feel the heat of his skin as he closed the distance between them, wrapping one arm around her waist and pulling her close to his body, though not quite flush with it.

His warm breath tickled her ear along with a light brush of lips, and she shuddered, her neck tilting to the side slightly to offer him more skin – an offer he took with a deep, quiet chuckle and a brush of tongue with a flash of teeth at her throat.

“You're doing well,” he husked, the rare praise twisting something inside her in a way that was half pleasant and half its own sort of torture.

So focused was she on his mouth that she flinched, startled, when she felt the fingers of his free hand slip between her thighs, drawing another, darker chuckle from him. The fingers were gentle but sure as they parted her lips and slipped inside, dragging against her front wall and across the aching bundle of nerves near her apex.

Riva shuddered hard against his hand and bit back a moan. Her body had been ready for his touch since the very first kiss that night, though her mind had taken its time catching up.

Was he satisfied with her answers, with the tears she'd finally spilled? She felt a whisper of disappointment at the thought, which was chased by a sick wave of guilt and worry: was she now so broken that even her rapport with Lucien had been knocked out of alignment? That was the one thing, _he_ was the one person she utterly, completely counted on, and if that surety faltered tonight, if she could hide some fragment of her guilty pain from him as well as herself...

It was unthinkable.

There was something else that lingered in her mind, some tiny, buried knot of truth that remained, that she had not yet spoken. That she couldn't yet see, herself. That knowledge set her trembling with something other than desire, a looming, cloudy fear, and even the steady strokes of Lucien's fingers seemed to fade into the background against that sickened feeling.

Then a hand in her hair yanked her head backward, forcing her to meet his gaze. Deep brown eyes glittered with sharp reproach and a sort of deadly amusement, his lips quirking up very slightly at one corner as if to ask, _do you doubt me?_

“Never,” she breathed aloud, relief and mild shame sending more tears slipping down her face and making her knees feel weak enough that for a moment, his hold and the chain at her wrists were the only things keeping her on her feet.

Lucien smirked in earnest, then, and she felt another finger slip into her – and her eyes went wide a second later as that touch briefly tingled, then flared almost immediately into a burn ten times more intense than what she had felt on her nipples earlier as the residue of the firebell salve took effect. “ _Lucien - !”_ she gasped, writhing, torn near equally between the need to withdraw and the need for even more of his touch.

“Interesting, isn't it?” he murmured, laughter threading through the question. “Surely you didn't think I was only going to use it on your breasts.”

“No – I – _please..._ ” The denial and plea were panted, Riva's whole body shaking as the co-mingled pain and arousal rose to a near-consuming height.

“Please, what?”

She let out another strangled gasp, and it was all she could do to form her answer. “Please don't stop.”

His answering laughter was damning against her ear. Then teeth bit down sharply at the lobe and he replied, almost gently, “You know that I'm going to.”

Riva snarled a curse in her native tongue. Yes, yes she did.

Even knowing that he would not allow her to climax, she could not help but let him drag her to the very brink of it, shivering and leaning into his chest, leaving her own blood from the shallow cuts he'd made earlier smeared across his skin. When he finally withdrew his fingers, she cried out in frustration. The burning sensation from the salve remained, just as intense, and she thought it might, _might_ just drag her over the brink...

But it didn't, and Lucien was murmuring in her ear again, obvious desire roughening his own voice in a way that left her utterly unguarded. “Why did you avoid this for so long, Riva? Were you afraid? Of _me?_ ”

If her mind had been clearer, she would have realized the question made little sense. As it was, she answered automatically, tumbling all unthinking into the trap, “No! Never, Lucien...”

“ _Never_ , is it?” The words were soft and perilous and full of all the control it had sounded as though he had allowed to slip a moment earlier, and Riva stared at him as the realization dawned that she had just given a very, _very_ wrong answer. “That isn't a very wise position.”

His hands released her, and he took a step back, gaze sweeping over her in a measured way that made something primal in her mind go cold.

Then that gaze grew distant, reflective, and he bent at the waist to pull a dagger from his boot – a true weapon, this time, unlike the little knife he had used on her so artfully that night. “I was quite adept at torture when I was alive,” he said almost conversationally, eyes falling to the blade as he turned it over in his hands, inspecting it. “As I'm sure you know.”

“Yes,” she whispered, then swallowed hard as she questioned whether she should be speaking at all, just then, but he did not chastise her.

“Haven't had occasion to do a great deal of it in earnest since then, of course, but it's a bit of a pity.” Lucien looked up at her, eyes cold and hard as the steel in his hand and the smile on his face. “Adept though I was, then, I did not yet have the rather unique advantage of having been very slowly tortured to death myself. I learned so many _fascinating_ things, that day. They drew it out for hours, but not nearly as long as they could have.”

His gaze went distant again, and he actually paced back and forth a few steps, tapping the flat of the blade against the inside of his hand.

“This is an even more unique situation, in a way, since I can do whatever I want in this place without _truly_ harming you.”

Riva could not take her eyes from him, nor her mind from the implicit threat of what he was saying. Though she had gone utterly still with rising terror – yes, in that moment, toward him – when she spoke, it was not to form the word that would end this knife-edged dance between them. ( _That_ was sacred. Afraid as she was, some part of her knew he would still honor it.)

“You remember what they did?”

“I remember _every moment of it_ ,” Lucien replied, eyes returning to hers, filled with black, merciless humor. “As it turns out, one's mind in undeath is not subject to the sort of self-protective forgetfulness that normally clouds over trauma. That is, I imagine, why so many ghosts stay so very angry.”

She swallowed, her mouth dry. “And are you angry, then, Lucien?”

“Always.” That one word held two centuries' worth of rage, all humor gone, and it was only empathy and bedrock trust in him that allowed her to endure his gaze in that moment, which stretched out long and taut between them.

And then it relaxed, as if the very world quietly sighed, and Riva could breathe again.

“But not at you.”

And through her relief, she remembered his flash of wordless gratitude near the beginning of that night, when she had spoken to combat the guilt that _he_ had buried, and with that memory came another flash of insight.

“They acted against you because you were the best of all of them. You couldn't be anything else,” she said softly, fiercely. “They were small and weak and corrupt, and they cared more about their own pride than the Brotherhood.”

Lucien stepped back to her, sheathing the dagger in the same movement, and ran fingertips along her jaw as he watched her face with a sudden intensity that was strangely gentle. “Yes,” he murmured, the rumble of his voice almost quiet enough to be lost in the breath he expelled with the word. “And that sounds familiar, doesn't it?”

It hit her like a punch to the gut, though his fingertips stayed smooth and soft against her skin.

_Delivering Astrid's death blow brought no satisfaction, only a tepid sense of pity._

_Listener._

_I should have been there._

_You are the Listener who plucked the last embers of her dying Family away from a traitor’s folly and fanned them back to steady flame. Do you reject that success?_

_No. But..._

All of that burning understanding must have shown on her face, for Lucien nodded once, his eyes expectant and patient, though his voice was full of command as he ordered: “Say it.”

It took several seconds for her to find the words, and fresh tears were already coursing down her face when she managed. “If I had... not been a threat to Astrid...”

“ _You couldn't be anything else_.” Her own words returned to her in his deep, powerful voice. “The Night Mother has returned, and we have a Listener again. You. The Brotherhood will not just _survive_ ; it will flourish, Riva, because _you_ couldn't be anything else.”

She nodded, eyes closing and head bowing, and suddenly all the pent-up pain and rage finally unwound and began to pour out of her, her wrenching sobs echoing through the stone room.

Riva raged, and she mourned. Mourned the Family she had found and lost, and mourned the easy security she had so briefly enjoyed among them before the fate of the Dark Brotherhood had been placed squarely on her slender shoulders. Though she had once run from this storm, now it was nothing but cleansing catharsis, a release of the poisoned ashes that had festered in her mind in the months since the betrayal.

She could not have said how long it was until somehow the chain was gone, and she was vaguely aware of collapsing into Lucien's arms, his warm strength enfolding her with a tenderness and care she had seldom found in any part of her life as he lifted and held her against his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically the scene the whole fic centered around when I first had the idea, and it's a relief to finally get it out even as I'm kind of nervous about posting it. I hope it hits the right notes for you.


End file.
